Susan Ouriou
Susan Ouriou is an award-winning literary translator (French and Spanish to English) and fiction writer. She has been a finalist for the Governor General’s Literary Award for Translation on seven occasions, winning for her translation of Pieces of Me by Charlotte Gingras. She also translated Catherine Leroux’s The Future, winner of 2024 CBC Canada Reads. Other translations of Ouriou’s have been featured on the International Board on Books for Youth’s honor lists. Ouriou is also the author of two novels, Damselfish, and the critically acclaimed Nathan, and the editor of two anthologies, the trilingual Beyond Words: Translating the World and the bilingual Languages of Our Land: Indigenous Poems and Stories from Quebec. She lives in Calgary.
FESTIVAL SHOWS
Le Matin Avec Fanny Britt & SUSAN OURIOU
Memorial Park Library, 2nd Floor
FESTIVAL BOOK
Sugaring Off
Susan Ouriou is the translator of this novel by esteemed Quebec writer Fanny Britt.
On the surface, Adam and Marion are the embodiment of success: wealthy, attractive, in love. While holidaying in Martha’s Vineyard, Adam surfs into a local young woman, Celia. The accident leaves her injured and financially at risk; for Adam and Marion it opens a fault of loneliness, rage, and desires that have too long been ignored.
Like a modern Virginia Woolf, Fanny Britt abrades the surface layer of our outward personas, delving into the complexity and contradictions of relationships. In this eviscerating critique of privilege, she asks what happens when one can no longer play a role—whether in a couple, family, or social structure—and the resulting friction between pleasure and consequence.
Winner of the Governor General’s Literary Award for French Language Fiction, Sugaring Off probes intimacy, denial, and how we are tied to others—whether those we love or exploit.
GET THE BOOK
BE CURIOUSER
- Podcast: Finding the Right Words with Award-Winning Literary Translator Susan Ouriou. –What Were You Thinking?
